Netgate SG-3100 – How to Verify/Force boot to M.2?

Buste963

I am a BSD boob… so I need help with making sure my pfSense box is booting off the M.2 drive (WD SA500 – overkill, but cheaper with a WD discount than other options).

I installed pfSense onto the M.2, but am concerned the system is still booting off the eMMC as the System Information dashboard is showing “0% of 451GiB – ufs”.

After seeing this post, I became concerned that the Marvell U-Boot has the eMMC set as priority, but I cannot stop the system fast enough to check or modify the boot priority.

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/141300/sg-5100-verify-that-m-2-ssd-is-recognized-after-physically-installing/6

I tried running /var/run/dmesg.boot but was denied.

my gpart show results:

Thanks in advance.

Rico

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-3100/m-2-sata-installation.html

-Rico

Buste963

@Rico pfsense is installed on the M.2; the M.2 is a SATA drive; the issue is that I am not sure that the BIOS is still booting off the eMMc or the M.2.

It is a question of the boot priority.

I do not know how to check the boot order, I cannot access the boot menu, and I cannot tell which drive pfSense is booting from. The instructions do not cover this, and this is more of a BIOS/BSD issue than a pfSense issue.

stephenw10

Run df -h that will show you which drive is being mounted as /

Or just check on the dashboard. But it seems like it is showing / 0% of 451GiB – ufs. In which case it is using the SSD as root.

Steve

Buste963

@stephenw10 said in Netgate SG-3100 – How to Verify/Force boot to M.2?:

drive is being mounted as /

Thank you for the tip Steve - the result of # df -h follows

I would still like to know how to access the boot priority.

stephenw10

The boot media is defined by the uboot envs. If you interrupt uboot to reach the Marvell>> prompt and run printenv you will see how those are defined. Generally speaking you should not be manually changing those but you will see the bootcmd variable determines what is booted. That is changed by the recovery image by what install target you chose.

Steve

Buste963

@stephenw10 Thanks again - this was very helpfull.

I see that netgate included a FreeBSD Handbook under the diagnostics tab...